This page describes backup plans, which let you define advanced backup strategies to back up your Compute Engine instance resources. In a backup plan, you can define when and how to back up a resource. You can include the backup frequency, the backup retention period, and the backup vault location to store backups. When you associate a backup plan to a resource, the Backup and DR Service automatically backs up and retains backups for those resources according to the configuration in the backup plan.
Before creating a backup plan, it is necessary to designate the storage location for your backups. To do so, you must create a backup vault.
A backup plan has backup rules, where the following applies:
- One or more backup rules can be used.
You can define the frequency for backup creation—hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.
- For weekly backups, you can choose a weekday for the rule.
- For monthly backups, you can choose a specific day of the month for the rule. For example, the 15th of the month.
You can use for both scheduled or on-demand backups.
Includes a backup window where you can define the specific timeframe of when backup jobs can start. The backup window uses the following:
- 24-hour clock format, with start and end times between 00 and 24 hours.
- A minimum of six hours for the window.
Considerations for backup storage
In a backup plan, you can consider the following for backup storage.
- You can define the number of days to store backups.
- Backups are automatically deleted after the defined backup retention period is reached.
- The default value for backup deletion is inherited from the minimum retention period of the backup vault used to store those backups.
- Backup retention periods cannot be less than the backup vault's retention period, it must be equal to or greater than it.
- Backups created using a backup plan are always immutable and therefore cannot be modified or deleted for the duration of the backup vault's minimum enforced retention period.
Backup plan supported regions
Backup plans can be created only in regions where the Backup and DR Service is available and where the resources to be backed up are located. To create a backup plan, a backup vault must also be available in that region. If you need to create a backup plan in the unsupported regions, use the backup templates in the management console.
Backup plan is supported in the following region.
| Geographic Area | Region Name | Region Description | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Americas | |||
us-central1 |
Iowa |
 Low CO2
|
|
us-east4 |
Northern Virginia | ||
| Europe | |||
europe-west1 |
Belgium |
Low CO2
|
|
europe-west4 |
Netherlands |
Low CO2
|
|
| Asia Pacific | |||
asia-east1 |
Taiwan |
Backup plan and rule names
Your backup plan names and rule names must meet the following requirements:
- Contain lowercase letters, numeric characters, dashes (
-), underscores (_), and periods (.), spaces are not allowed - Start and end with a number or letter
- Maximum of 63 characters
- Cannot be represented as an IP address in dotted-decimal notation. For example,
192.0.2.255